EDDIE Beats the Bookies

@TechReport{butler:1995:eddie,
author = "James M. Butler and Edward P. K. Tsang",
title = "EDDIE Beats the Bookies",
institution = "Computer Science, University of Essex",
year = "1995",
type = "Technical Report",
number = "CSM-259",
address = "Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK",
month = "15 " # dec,
keywords = "genetic algorithms, genetic programming",
URL = "http://cswww.essex.ac.uk/CSP/papers/CSM-259.ps.Z",
URL = "http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/tsang98eddie.html",
abstract = "Betting on a horse race is, in many ways, like
investing in a financial market. You invest your money
on the horse that you believe is going to win the race,
in the hope of a return on your investment. Like some
financial investments, horse race betting is a high
risk investment, in that you can lose all of your
money. As with making the right financial decision, the
return on your investment, if you bet on the winning
horse, can be considerable. In this paper, we present
EDDIE, a genetic...",
notes = "
EDDIE, which stands for Evolutionary Dynamic Data
Investment Evaluator, is designed as a tool to help
channelling expert's knowledge into computer programs
for making rules, which can then be examined by experts
and used by other people. EDDIE is based on the concept
of Genetic Programming, which borrows its ideas from
evolution. EDDIE been applied to real horse races. We
used the first 150 handicap races results in 1993
together with the expert knowledge that we could find
from a text on horse racing to train EDDIE, which
generates rules about betting. These rules were used to
bet on the remaining 30 races in that season and
obtained 88% return on investment. As scientists, we
should always be cautious about experimental results.
The sample size is small and luck may have a part to
play in the success of EDDIE. However, the results
justifies the investment of more time and effort into
this research, which is what we are doing. See also
\cite{tsang:1998:eddie}",
}